Time Warner Cable is one of many cable companies that try to convince their customers Verizon FiOS and other true fiber-to-the-home providers offer nothing special.  After all, they proclaim: “we’ve got fiber, too!”

Time Warner Cable put this "special notice" on its website for cable subscribers.

More innovation from the late 70s.

In California’s Southland, stretching from the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valley across the Inland Empire to deep within Orange County, the cable operator just finished installing 361,149 miles of fiber, telling the LA Times it has enough fiber to wrap around the equator nearly 15 times.

Unfortunately for residential subscribers, the cable company can’t manage to stretch some strands your way.

Most of the $120-million expansion program is designed to benefit area businesses — some 125,000 across the Southland that could potentially tell the phone company to take a hike.  The Business Class expansion delivers service to business parks and campuses across the sprawling region that the cable operator has not wired before.

While Time Warner likes to say they are running “an advanced fiber network,” for many customers it’s the same technology cable companies have been using since the 1990s.  Once it reaches your neighborhood, classic coaxial cable brings service the rest of the way, and some of that coax has been around since the late 1970s.

That makes at least part of Time Warner’s network as fresh and innovative as — the Sony Walkman.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Time Warner Cable Fiber Ad.flv[/flv]

A Time Warner Cable ad implying the cable company delivers a fiber optic experience to customers in southern California.  (1 minute)